While we were at Portaventura we obviously had to try the new Intamin built Uncharted ride. This is a collaboration of my favourite ride manufacturer and favourite game franchise so what’s not to love? I’ll be going into everything that we saw and felt so please don’t read on if you don’t want spoilers!
Overall, it was a good ride, the layout was fun and snappy and there were a few surprise elements included in the ride such as the cars rotating and turning to face different directions as the ride progresses.
The experience all starts with the queue as you’ll go through 2 scenes in the show building, one is just an old West saloon looking building, and is very loosely themed to the franchise, at least in my opinion!
The second room is the one you’ll have seen all over social media with the two animatronics of Chloe and Nate. They have a decent likeness to the film renditions of the characters but I’ll assume they couldn’t use full likenesses of any of the characters for whatever reason! It is a bit of shame that they couldn’t use the games character designs but what we have is good enough.
Following the first two rooms, you’ll move into another area that looks like underground catacombs with stalactites and the occasional mist effect. I will say that the queueline did spoil the experience a little bit as we queued outside the building, then batched inside, then batched a 3rd time after the animatronics and all the time your thinking ‘how many more queues are there’!? It is to be expected though as the ride has always had long queues whenever we’ve seen it or passed any board with ride times on. I think we queued for about 2 hours all in.
Once you’re into the station though, the fun begins as you’ll drop your bags off and board the ride vehicles, themed around explorer Jeeps, and then sent off onto the ride!
You’ll see a static scene or two throughout the ride portion but a lot of the story is told through video screens. It feels very Uncharted: Drakes Fortune with the gun fight you’ll see and the helicopter lifting artifacts out towards the end.
There are 5 launches and they are all quite tame compared with other attractions I’ve been on, and some of them barely push the car faster than it already was, but they don’t feel unnecessary in my opinion.
There are a couple of fun elements such as a turntable, a return spike and a fairly sharp drop but other than those, it is quite a tame, but still enjoyable ride. Less of a coaster and more of a dark ride with coaster elements.
I wasn’t going into it with very high expectations as early reviews seemed a bit so so, praising the hardware but criticising the lack of scenery during the ride. I can see why people would think that, but it wasn’t devoid of scenery and there were always things to look at so I’d say it exceeded my expectations!
A very enjoyable ride in my eyes, a little lacking in places and much more enjoyable on a shorter queue, but definitely worth visiting for, especially if you like Uncharted as much as I do!
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